Seth Boyd never gave up. Not as a student straining to hear classroom lectures and not as a math teacher working with students struggling to master the subject.
“He would take kids that other teachers would write off,” said his daughter Barbara Boyd Proulx. “He would always be on the phone with parents, and he was always saying, `Your son is not dumb, he’s just a little behind the 8 ball.'”
Mr. Boyd, 90, a former Proviso Township High School math teacher who had a second career as a movie extra, died Tuesday, Oct. 18, in his Villa Park home.
He was the fourth of 10 children, born in 1915 to a poor Indiana farming family. Proulx said her father often spoke about the hard times his family faced during the Depression.
“At Christmas he would get an orange and be excited about it,” she said.
Whooping cough left him with severely diminished hearing when he was an adolescent, and some teachers were unsympathetic to his situation.
“He had teachers make fun of him,” Proulx said. “He told me that several of his teachers told him that because of his hearing, he [wouldn’t be able to] go to college and hold a job.”
Mr. Boyd graduated in 1934 from Epsom High School in Daviess County, Ind. He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Indiana University.
The adversity Mr. Boyd faced early in life made him resolute in becoming a teacher, Proulx said, so he could show other students with learning difficulties that they could overcome their problems.
In his 45 years as a teacher, he reached hundreds of students in various high schools, many of whom expressed their gratitude later.
“He has boxes of letters from students throughout the years,” Proulx said.
Former student Martin Jischke called his Proviso calculus teacher a “special, once-in-a-lifetime teacher” who inspired him to study math, science and engineering in college. Jischke, now president of Purdue University, added that Mr. Boyd’s “distinctive personality” also made him unforgettable.
In the late 1960s, he developed the “Boyd Number Line,” a wooden teaching aid that allowed students to visualize math.
On a whim after retiring from teaching, Mr. Boyd applied to be an extra in the Kevin Bacon film “She’s Having a Baby.” Other films soon followed. In “Rent-a-Cop,” Mr. Boyd can be seen behind Burt Reynolds in a department store. In “Midnight Run” he was spotted making a phone call behind Robert DeNiro.
Mr. Boyd met his wife, Nancy, while teaching at Proviso. Nancy was a physical education teacher who had to quit her job when they married in 1959 because spouses could not teach at the same school, Proulx said.
Mr. Boyd served on the Salt Creek Board of Education. The Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois Council of Teachers of Mathematics honored him for distinguished service.
In addition to his wife and daughter, Mr. Boyd is survived by another daughter, Virginia; three brothers, Robert, Loyd and George; and two grandchildren.
Graveside service will be held at 11 a.m. Thursday at the New Bethel Cemetery in Washington, Ind.
